Re: Syntax Grammars

From: Edward Hobbs (EHOBBS@WELLESLEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 14:43:05 EST


James Dewan asks:

--->>>>>>>>
I have been following the discussions on different grammars. One =
grammar I have not heard about yet was published in 1965: The Language =
of the New Testament, by Eugene Van Ness Goetchius. Could someone =
please critique this book for me? Thank you.

James Dewan
Pastor, Sinclairville Baptist Church
Western New York
<<<<<<-------

This is a textbook for beginning NT Greek, not a "grammar," unless one
uses that word as a synonym for a beginning textbook.

I thought it a very fine textbook, and used it for about 20 years. The
first several years I used it, it was available only as dittoed sheets;
Goetchius would ship a box of pages for each student (the box was the size
which holds a ream. (Students hated the ditto-format!) I continued using
it (in Berkeley) till I left for Harvard and Wellesley in 1981; now my
students have already had at least three semesters of classical Greek
before I see them, including a semester on Plato (usually taught by the
renowned Mary Lefkowitz, with occasional classroom appearances by Sir Hugh
Lloyd-Jones, Oxford's Regius Professor of Greek until his retirement).
Now, it's really FUN to teach the Greek NT!

Goetchius himself died not long ago. He liked to think of himself as a
curmudgeon, but he had a really tender heart and was an easy touch.
Alas that he issued his book (as did Funk) as an explicitly structuralist work
just as that approach was being abandoned by the field of linguistics
itself. The book wasn't actually much influenced by it, however, after the
first few chapters; and it had a great workbook to go with it, which made
it much more valuable to me as a teacher.

Edward Hobbs

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